awareness to the spirit of the grove.
But it was another spirit, more familiar but infinitely less peaceful,
that she found. She blinked, and saw a man in a white robe sitting beside
the altar stone. She hesitated, fighting an impulse to flee, but he was
holding out his hand. When she first saw him in the robes of the Arch-
Druid he had looked like a stranger. Now, for the first time since she
had known him, he looked old.
“Once more we sit together on the eve of battle,” he murmured.
“And once more I desire only to know that you are near . . .”
That was just as well, she thought tartly, for if he had asked her to lie
with him now she would have slapped him. If in him the fires still burned,
he had learned to keep them banked, and as for herself, the armor she had
grown around her heart could not be taken off in one afternoon.
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“What do you think will happen when they come?” she asked.
“It will be our magic against the spirit of Rome,” Ardanos said
thoughtfully. “I keep thinking about the stories Brangenos told of
Vercingetorix, who could not defeat Caesar though he had all the Dru-
ids of Gallia to help him.”
“And you are afraid that the will of this commander may bind his
men into an entity that can resist the Druids of Britannia?”
“It is possible. And if they make a landing, I fear our warriors will
not be able to hold them. Lhiannon, if that happens you must save your-
self. You said that becoming Arch-Druid changed me, and it is true. I
have to plan for defeat as well as for victory. Coventa has had visions of
a house of priestesses on the mainland within a sacred grove, with you
as their leader, but for that, you must survive.”
Lhiannon shivered, though the wind had ceased. Golden rays of late
afternoon sunlight shimmered through the trees. “Mearan saw some-
thing of the sort when she lay dying.” The old High Priestess had seen
Mona drenched in blood as well. “But I hardly dare to believe in this
prophecy, since all the others have served us so ill . . .”
“Perhaps . . .” He took her hand. “But Lhiannon, it is the only hope
we have!”
“And what about you?” She turned to face him. “Will you fl ee as
well?”
“While our priests stand Helve and I are bound to stand with them,” he
said with a sigh. “Just now, my dear, my own survival does not seem very
likely. But I can face my own end with more peace knowing you are free.”
And how will I face life, knowing you are gone? she wondered. Suddenly
the shield around her heart did not seem so impervious. From a tree in
the grove a raven called, and from somewhere across the fields its mate
replied.
Ravens perched on the gate to the palisaded fortlet that the Romans
had built up against the dike that had once defended Camulodunon. It
was open, its garrison fled. It had been only five days, thought Boudica,
since they had marched out of Teutodunon. Now she watched her hap-
hazard army streaming down the road past the Roman dike that had once
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sheltered the emperor’s encampment and making camp in the remains of
Cunobelin’s dun. Tents and wagons covered the land halfway around the
city whose red roofs glowed from the hilltop two miles away.
She recognized Tabanus pushing through the crowd, and signaled
to Eoc to let him approach her.
“I am glad to see you safe.” She had been surprised when the Tri-
novante slave had volunteered to go back to Colonia, and found it
amazing that he had been able to leave once more.
The man shrugged. “My master is running about like a chicken
destined for the pot, and for certain, no one else is paying attention.
Some of the veterans wanted to blockade the main roads, but we started
a rumor that this would encourage you to attack the houses on the side
streets, and their neighbors stopped them.”
“How many have left the city?” asked Morigenos, joining them.
Tabanus shrugged. “A few . . . the others fear they will be picked off
more easily if they leave.”
“What are they thinking?” asked Boudica, sitting down on a bag of
grain. “Without walls, they must know they cannot resist us.”
“Their leaders were in the legions,” the goddess spoke within. “They
think that no barbarian can defeat Rome. They believe that their brother soldiers
will rescue them . . .”
“And will they?”
“Listen— what do the ravens say?”
Boudica smiled, remembering how she had heard them during her
poppy dream. One was calling now from the fort, and from somewhere
overhead another answered. As she looked up, it flew over her right
shoulder, and she saw a few white feathers in its wing.
“The ravens say that someone brings us good news,” she said aloud,
and in the next moment they all heard the stuttering hoof beats of a
horse fast ridden coming down the road. Eoc gave her one of those un-
easy looks that had become the common response to her pronounce-
ments, then turned to watch with the rest as the rider appeared. A wave
of cheering followed him.
“We smashed ’em!” The messenger slid off his horse, still talking.
“We did what you said, my lady, and got most of the men on foot. The
commander skittered off with his cavalry, didn’t stop till they reached
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their outpost, and doesn’t dare stick his nose outside his walls. Tingeto-
rix and the rest are on their way back, but he wanted you to know right
away. Attack Colonia whenever you please, my queen—there’s no one
to stop you now!”
Boudica nodded as the murmur of angry anticipation that spread
through the camp found an echo within. As they neared Colonia,
ragged men of the Trinovantes had begun to join them, with no arms
but their shovels and hoes. They had suffered far more than the Iceni,
and far longer, and their eyes burned with a fanatical fire. Secure in her
own country, Boudica had not understood the extent to which the Ro-
mans had forced the Trinovantes to pay for their own subjugation.
Pollio is dead, but the men who sent him, the men who raped my people, are
still in the town. They, too, must die.
More men, and more weapons, arrived every day. Now men of sub-
stance were coming in, bringing supplies and workers in wood and
leather and iron as well as more food. It would take a day or two more
to orga nize them, but any Roman who changed his mind about fl eeing
Colonia would not get far now.
“The Great Queen’s army fills the plain,
She leads them to the war–
A hundred thousand in her train
And every day brings more.”
She gazed up at the city with narrowed eyes. Count our campfires,
Romans. Listen to our songs . . . We won’t keep you waiting long!
W hat are they waiting for?” murmured Coventa.
Lhiannon squinted across the water as the afternoon su
n glanced off
Roman helmets. Through dry lips she murmured, “It must take a lot of
time to orga nize so many men.” There were certainly a lot of them; the
shelving ground on the other side of the strait shimmered with points of
refl ected light.
The fi rst files had been sighted just after dawn, and by noon the
Britons had formed up to meet them where the meadows sloped down
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to the mudsands, a bare half-mile across the water. Veterans from the
Durotrige and Silure wars waited with men from all over Mona, and in
front of them the Druids, the white robes of the priests mixed with the
priestesses’ dark blue.
Now and again someone would peer toward the point, where they
had stationed a lad with good eyes. Even so, the sound of his horn was
a shock after waiting so long. Lhiannon gave herself a mental shake.
Eventually all things, good or evil, ended. Had she thought they would
sit here like some army out of legend until they all turned to stone?
Now she could make out movement at the far edge of the water.
Ardanos was moving down the line of Druids. If there had been clouds,
they might have tried to raise a storm against the Romans, but for a
week now, Mona had enjoyed blue skies. Lhiannon sipped from her wa-
ter flask, holding the liquid in her mouth before swallowing.
Ardanos stood with closed eyes, staff outstretched toward the invis-
ible barrier. Against one man, or a few, it would hold, but not against
the massed will of thousands. Dark shapes moved on the water as the
Romans’ landing craft began to put out from shore. The Arch-Druid
turned.
“Sweetly, now, my dear ones,” he murmured. “Sing now as the
Children of Lyr sing beneath the waves, and raise the wall of sound!”
And softly, as he had commanded, the first vibrations rolled from
thirty throats. Breathing slowly and easily, Lhiannon let the sound fl ow,
and as the rhythm was established began to shape it with words and
will.
It was an ancient spell, so old the words’ precise meanings were un-
clear. Only the sense behind them remained. From voice to water the
vibration was passing . . . water shivering, shimmering . . . particles shift-
ing, lifting as they reached the barrier to rise in a sorcerous mist that
curled and curdled across the water in shapes of terror.
Lost in sound, Lhiannon sensed the Roman ships lose way and drift
helpless on the tide. She noted without comprehension the sun’s slow
slide toward the west. But beyond the barrier the Druids were raising
she could feel the pulsing pressure of another will.
As the day faded the Druids’ strength lessened, and that opposition
grew stronger. Lhiannon tried to sing louder as first one, then another
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voice stilled. It was almost dark now. One by one, the remaining Druids
fell silent. With a low cry Coventa collapsed against her. Lhiannon’s breath
caught and abruptly her own voice stopped. A moment later the last
male voices cut off. She blinked, and saw one of the warriors catch Ar-
danos as he swayed.
Red light flared as someone got the piled logs aflame. The glow
showed her the slumped forms of the Druids and the warriors with drawn
swords behind them. Wavelets caught the light in red glints as if blood
already flowed. She heard a drumbeat. Through the thinning mist the
prows of the Roman boats were beginning to emerge.
Druids staggered toward the shelter of the trees. Lhiannon gulped
water and got her arm around Coventa. She was weary to her marrow,
but that did not matter now.
“Coventa, get up, girl! Remember your training! Breathe!” Was she
speaking to Coventa or to herself ?
She handed her water flask to the other woman and took up two of the
torches from the heap by the fire, handed them off to Belina and Brenna,
and got more. Of the dozen priestesses, only nine remained standing. They
would have to be enough. The Romans fear our priestesses— let them see us, and
be afraid!
She plunged her torches into the fire and held them high. Helve
bared her teeth in a smile and together they led the others forward to
stand in front of the warriors in a widely spaced line.
The drumbeat faltered as the men in the first boats caught sight of
the dark-robed priestesses. But the pressure of the multitudes behind
pushed them forward. Lhiannon could see faces now within the gleaming
helms. Behind the priestesses Ardanos had gotten the remaining Druids
together and in a hoarse voice was calling down curses upon the enemy.
Her own throat was raw, but she no longer needed to sing, only to
scream . . .
As the first prows grounded on the mudflats the priestesses rushed
forward, ullulating like the furies the Romans feared. The fi rst Romans
who jumped out of the boats recoiled, shouting as they sank into the
mud. But some canny commander had anticipated the problem and in
another moment they were slapping boards on the soft ground. The
next men off faced the flurry of Celtic javelins with braced feet and
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raised shields. In close ranks they began to move forward and as others
pressed in behind them the boats in which they had come pushed off
and started back across the strait for more.
As the first legionaries reached solid ground the Britons rushed for-
ward to meet them.
“Lhiannon! Helve! Flee!” Ardanos’s voice rose above the din. “Now
it is work for swords!”
Lhiannon cast her flaming torches at the nearest foes and ran.
The stink of burning buildings lay heavy on the air. Boudica had
smelled it once or twice before when the thatching of a roundhouse
caught fire—a heavy, acrid smell quite unlike the scent of clean logs.
She had ordered the attack at dawn, when the townsfolk, tired of wait-
ing for the Britons to make their move, should be less alert, but they
might as well have slept in—there had been little resis tance.
She stood now in the atrium of the big building that had housed the
city offices and the governor when he was in town. Afternoon light
showed her a mass of broken tile, blackened plaster, and smoking beams.
The bodies of the servants who had been left to defend them lay among the
ruins. Fragments of scorched parchment fluttered in the wind. But the
garden where the governor’s wife had entertained her was untouched, and
the goddess on her plinth still watched with a secret smile.
A warrior put a rope around the statue to pull it down and she waved
him away. “As one goddess to another, I thank you . . .” said the Voice
within.
Tascio picked his way through the debris, making an obeisance as
he saw her there. “Lady, Bituitos says to come—”
Smoke rose now all over the city. Boudica hoped that the men were
remembering to search the buildings for weapons and foodstuff s before
settng them afire. They
needed no encouragement to pick up any orna-
ments or jewelry that they found. The streets were littered with aban-
doned boxes and debris from the burning, with the occasional body,
some not quite dead.
She felt little sympathy. As they marched south she had heard a hun-
dred tales of Roman injustice and brutality to rival her own. This was a
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city of over two thousand. The only surprise was that there were not
more bodies on the ground. Of course Celtic slaves and servants had
been fl eeing ever since the Iceni showed up on their doorstep—many of
them had joined the horde, but the Romans and foreign slaves should
have been here. She wondered where they had gone.
A pack of grim-faced Trinovantes trotted by. As they passed a build-
ing that was still whole, a man in a Roman tunic appeared in the door-
way with two scared slaves brandishing clubs behind him. He had a
sword, while the Trinovantes were armed only with hoes and pitch-
forks, but fear was no match for fury. With a feral cry the Britons were
on him, and in moments Roman and slaves alike went down. She could
see the attackers’ arms rising and falling long after the cries had ceased.
When they stopped at last, the Trinovante leader had a sword.
Laughing, the men entered the house, and a few moments later a
woman screamed. Boudica suppressed a shudder, but she knew better than
to try and stop them. Did she even wish to? Romans had raped her daugh-
ters. Let their women suffer now. As she turned away, a flicker of move-
ment in a doorway caught her eye. She shouted, lifting her shield as half a
dozen armed men burst into the road between her and her escort.
“Ho, a gladiatrix!” called one, leaping toward her as the other two
turned to engage Tascio and the other men.
That was what the Roman soldier had called Rigana.
A surge of fury rent away Boudica’s awareness and the Morrigan
flowed in, drawing her sword in one smooth sweep that knocked the
man’s blade from his hand. The laughter hardly had time to change to fear
before the sword whirled around and back across and took off his head.
As She leaped forward to fall upon the others, the sound that burst
from Her throat was halfway between a shout of rage and a raven’s cry. She
took one man with a thrust through the back and used Her shield to shove
another onto Tascio’s blade. By this time his companions had brought the
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